COMMUNION

I weave through rows of utterly alien beings who I trust more than the humans I've known since childhood. We're preparing to connect to The Network, and each of us must prepare in our own way.

I slide my naked body into a recess in the smooth metal floor, and gaze out the transparent membrane set into the wall in front of me. I watch galaxies and impossible currents of energy flow in fast-forward beyond the not-glass, as embryonic fluid fills the cavity where my smooth form rests.

From the ceiling descends a metallic appendage, an inorganic tentacle. I tilt my head back and part my lips as it enters my mouth. My jaw unhinges and I can feel the tissues of my body reambiguate into stem cells and meld with the probe now stretching deep into my stomach.  

A vibration hums through my being as the connection to my altered neurology is completed. My reality divides into two, then four, eight, and out exponentially. My senses breath through each being attached to The Network in communion. Collective consciousness looking in at itself.

Stretching out beyond the void between this world and the next, past the fickle stars between, I feel our psychic strands converge in a place beyond sanity. A great awareness radiates out through the web of consciousness encircling it. The circuit is complete, and a wave crashes into my mind, thrumming through every layer of reality. The sound of a dial up modem sings, and I can smell the acrid scent of my spinal column burning. Half formed critiques of hierarchy pass through my lizard brain as the singular I mistakes the collective I for a newly birthed god.

My personal thoughts come back into focus as a signal from the retracting tentacle strikes my mind like a tuning fork. My body finishes weaving itself back together from the cellular slurry I had dissolved into, and I step out of the communion pool.